To A Brother Moping Around Due To A Mistake Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

(for Rene)

Perhaps you were wrong last summer
But there are motley fortunes to gather

You spend your days lost in the garden,
In the midst of roses, your face is ashen
You ignore their beauty and sweet breath
They wilt; no doubt, stressed by your regret
Your thoughts have taken you to the past
Must you dwell there? Should your stay last?

Summer has come and gone like breeze
Tropical birds left for warm nesting trees
Frantic to escape the imminent rains
Awaited by parched rice fields in the plains
Like sages, birds know when they must go
For when the time is stale, fate will not flow

I have said angry words I cannot take back
Rocks cast on a wall can create a crack
But there’s time for apology, to patch the wall
The beauty of time –it ceases not to crawl
The waiting morrow is a gift of a chance
To reverse the damage of a wrong dance

Only fools reside in moments long gone
Missteps and wrongs cannot be undone
To march to the future is for them who are alive
Dwellers in the past, of spirits are shrived
Death is not the end of breath but of the will
To travel with the sun, to reject a standstill

Time spent regretting how we blundered
Is precious time senselessly squandered
For, alas, the past cannot be dismantled
But a lesson on hindsight that must be learned
The past we leave; the future we must live
To its space and time, our efforts we give

Stranded in your guilt trip, in your sorrow,
How will you catch the bus to tomorrow?